China’s intrusion into Philippine affairs: a brewing disaster

There is an area of writing between factual news and unfettered opinion that is called ‘analysis”. Sometimes analysis is fact-based and verifiable and sometimes it is mostly speculation.

This analysis tilts toward speculative and the reader is free to judge if it has merit or not.

I think that China is pushing into the Philippines in a way that will penalize Filipinos for generations to come. The current government is not resisting. It is welcoming the intrusions. The amounts of money involved are beyond comprehension.

Let’s look at some of the ways that China is here. By “China”, I mean either government or private acts by mainland Chinese entities under the presumption that there is spoken or unspoken agreement between the parties. I leave it to the reader to dredge up verification of any claims with which they may be unfamiliar.

Smuggling: China is engaged in stealing Filipino resources, smuggling her sands out to build illegal islands, fishing in Philippine waters, poaching protected species like turtles and pangolin, conducting mining operations in secret with the complicity of LGU heads, and sneaking goods through customs without paying proper tariffs.

Drug dealing: Huge quantities of drugs from China are pushed into the Philippines. They are distributed across the nation and, from the Philippines, around the world.

President’s family: A recent P6.4 billion drug shipment from China was speculatively linked to the President’s son. The son and everyone else cited as ‘involved’ by Customs people deny involvement. The Senate is ordering up a lifestyle check on the President’s son.

Irrational Foreign Policy: It is irrational for a nation to discard a hard-won international arbitration award that protects her own rights to resources and sovereignty. It is irrational for a President and Secretary of State to push away long and loyal American protection in favor of Chinese occupation of Philippine waters.

Economy: It is also irrational to fund economic growth with debt rather than equity. Equity is direct investment by private interests from overseas, or from large domestic companies. Yet the President’s drug war and uncivil behavior destabilizes the economy and chases equity investors away. Leaving only debt to China for funding. Easy money but an economic catastrophe in the making.

Fake news, fake popularity: Pro-Duterte rallies are dead. They are poorly attended except by paid citizens bused in for a free meal. Yet the President’s paid propaganda staff brag of huge followings, in the millions. Educated people wink, and know, those followings are as fake as the news that relentlessly spews from the keyboards of the propagandists. The President’s popularity is a shell, and the inside is getting empty. China has the technical ability to deliver ‘followers’ and ‘likes’, but can’t deliver effective policy and deeds in the Philippines.

China has gifted weapons to the AFP: This is a blatant attempt by China and the President to purchase AFP loyalty. The AFP delivered the weapons to the PNP, not wanting receive arms from the nation occupying Philippine seas and chasing Filipino fishermen out of the waters. It would be a slap in the honor for the AFP to use the enemy’s arms.

Tourism and Labor: China canceled tours under Aquino as protest of policies, and has re-instated them under Duterte. Let’s look forward. Chinese tourists will replace those from western nations (Europe, Australia, America, Canada). And Chinese workers will be imported to do construction work allocated to, and funded by, China. The Philippines will be going Chinese. That is no problem, except China has a different moral code than what is reflected in the Philippine Constitution. Impunity is prominent over equality and fairness. Obedience is prominent over self-determination. Bribes are acceptable. We see the Philippine national government following the Chinese model rather than the Philippine Constitution. One party, demanding obedience.

So what we have is a Philippine government that has gone pro-China, and behaved irrationally, giving up the seas, complicit or complacent with smuggling and drugs, sending the economy into a debt trap, and undermining democratic and human rights values. Are we to believe this is home grown, natural, and China is just standing by and watching?

If it looks, walks, and quacks like a partnership, we can figure that it is one.

Now that I have learned that the rich Europeans are creeping in the AIIB, I guess we know who will own China’s debts one day.
But for now, they are in a lending spree left and right,up and down, inside and out.
They will have to borrow in order to lend.

my intent: The Filipino mind is as a soft tablet mimicking the next ruler. “tabula viscosa” – couldn’t find a word for impressionable. Admittedly a poor attempt to translate Irineo’s metaphor:
“Like an impressionable slate that just mimics the next ruler” Sorry, Edgar was not quite successful.

Spanish period:. Rich indios thought they were españoles or mestizos
American period: regarded themselves as brown Americans despite not being accorded US citizenship
China period: Rich Pinoys (native) will feel and think they are Han Chinese 😂😂

*******
China has a gargantuan appetite for ownership. Almost one in four of new homes in the state of New South Wales (NSW) is being snapped up by Chinese buyers. This is according to a Credit Suisse analysis of state revenues

The impact here is the sustainment of a real estate boom. The young are left out of the property market. And cash-laden sellers in NSW migrate to my state of Queensland where real estate is more affordable.

The impact in China is capital flight. The Chinese authorities are trying to stem the flight mostly from the growing middle class.

A global redistribution of wealth.

At least, the Chinese buyers here do not install missile batteries and anti-aircraft systems that I know of.
*****

It is good my daughter and son-in-law in Vic, Australia were/ are both employed when they got their house. I forgot the numbers now but when I got it and compared it to its equivalent in the US, wow, pricey indeed. It seems worldwide, the Chinese are driving up prices of choice places.

*******
There is another form of Chinese intrusion into the affairs of other states — that of Chinese students in Western universities.

“Having observed attacks on academic freedoms in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — discussions have begun in diplomatic and security circles about whether the Five Eyes intelligence partners should respond collectively to the threat, so there are no “weak links” which can be exploited.”

“…’The silencing of anyone in our society from students to lecturers to politicians is an affront to our values,’ Ms. Adamson told the Confucius Institute at Adelaide University.”

“How do they do it? How is their espionage different than, let’s say, the Russians or the East Germans were?

It’s different. It has the same objectives because they all go back to Sun Tzu in one form or another, or the fifth century B.C., who had the five kinds of spies. He wrote the book on spying. The Chinese have done espionage, spying, and intelligence work very well since the beginning. It’s all through the romance of the Three Kingdoms. It’s been a central part of their work.

They use different techniques. You don’t find the case officer in a trench coat on the corner making a pass with an agent or laying down a dead drop, necessarily. What you find is the massive collection technique, the vacuum cleaner. Somebody once said — I think this is in Nick [Eftimiades]’s book — “If the Russians want to get certain sand from a beach that’s special, they’ll have a submarine come in at night. They’ll put a crew infiltration. They’ll get a bucket full of sand, and they’ll take it back to the submarine, and leave.” The Chinese will have 500 people having picnics on the beach, each picking up the sand in a small can, and bringing it back.

If the name of the game is simply “persuasion”, IMHO, the Anglosphere (to include Western European nations), has a leg up already;

you see a bunch of English-speaking folks went for socialism/communism early on, after WWII,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Spies (there were a bunch of American spies too), but once the Soviet Socialist experiment proceeded, more … specifically those stationed in the West and the Anglosphere, actually turned and bought into the Western/capitalist model,

having seen the stark difference,

now the Chinese politburo are already capitalist in deed, BUT where they will succumb is exactly in these Chinese students coming here or say Australia, or the UK, or Germany, or France, etc. , where they’ll assume Western values,

already these Chinese students (not the princelings’ kids, they’ll remain loyal to the Communist party) but the new middle class/businessmen, who send their kids abroad to school or to stand up businesses, they essentially become Americanized,

whether bad or good (ie. hyperconsumerism, take-take-take mentality, etc.), at least they are not loyal to the Borg anymore, Han Chinese way of seeing things. So the core of Americanism is individualism (or Micha’s selfishness), the antidote to Han culture.

Local news coverage already exposed here of Chinese students or those on business visas, is that the 20-somethings are into ‘the Fast & the Furious’ culture (very Southern California specific), Chinese street races, if this strain of American culture takes root in China, then China becomes America, or at the very least becomes very familiar to us.

You don’t introduce , Western theoretical “values” & “principles” to these Chinese students,

you introduce them to cars, money & women , that’s how you persuade the Chinese to be Americans. Then maybe you can work in Thoreau, John Muir, and books like Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire”, that’s IMHO the real America. But as Arabs like to say, “daraja, daraja…” , step by step (baby steps). 😉

Young Aussies becoming poor in their own land. That’s what creates pushback in the form of white power, or racism. I wish the government of China had a different set of principles, then it would not be so easy to judge the flows of money and people coming out of China.

Maybe this is OT … I have an Indian friend, and it seems China is also flexing its muscles at India — flooding it with Chinese products, usurping territories in Tibet. The Indian people are trying to fight back but they have a democratic government much like the Philippines, and they get bogged down by factions and self interest groups.

The thing is, in terms of demography (1 billion population of India can take on one-on-one with every mainland Chinese alive), economy, land size, history and culture (Indian heritage goes back for a millennia like the Chinese) — India can fight head to head with China.

If I were to pick which guy I’d want as the future superpower/head honcho of the world, I’d pick India—for all its warts and stumbles—over China. I suppose a lot of that, I attribute that to my instinctive, tribal preference for a fellow democracy over a non-democratic state.

But—at least the very least—India has a robust democracy for all her flaws; that mean, at the very least, unlike China, India’s problems are out in the open for their whole public to see and nitpick. To use a familiar saying: “Democracy is the worst form of government, save all others.”

That and India parallels us nicely. A “late-bloomer” riding on the services sector rather than the manufacturing sector, with a vibrant civil society (guess who ranks in the Top 3 in terms of NGO density) to deal with dynastic trapos.

Ah. This is me just saying random stuff, but I’d like to see in my lifetime an alliance of “developing democracies” to promote democracy—cause the advice from the West can sound patronizing at times (and has the perfect bad optics from the perespective of populist-nationalist strongmen) and it’s frankly tiring to hear authoritarian government as the preferred government of the non-West.

QUOTE:
Objectives and activities
The Commonwealth’s objectives were first outlined in the 1971 Singapore Declaration, which committed the Commonwealth to the institution of world peace; promotion of representative democracy and individual liberty; the pursuit of equality and opposition to racism; the fight against poverty, ignorance, and disease; and free trade.[96] To these were added opposition to discrimination on the basis of gender by the Lusaka Declaration of 1979,[43] and environmental sustainability by the Langkawi Declaration of 1989. These objectives were reinforced by the Harare Declaration in 1991
The Commonwealth’s current highest-priority aims are on the promotion of democracy and development, as outlined in the 2003 Aso Rock Declaration,[99] which built on those in Singapore and Harare and clarified their terms of reference, stating, “We are committed to democracy, good governance, human rights, gender equality, and a more equitable sharing of the benefits of globalisation.” The Commonwealth website lists its areas of work as: democracy, economics, education, gender, governance, human rights, law, small states, sport, sustainability, and youth.
Through a separate voluntary fund, Commonwealth governments support the Commonwealth Youth Programme, a division of the Secretariat with offices in Gulu (Uganda), Lusaka (Zambia), Chandigarh (India), Georgetown (Guyana) and Honiara (Solomon Islands).

I discovered in my Facebook “on this day” feed today the open letter Mr. D wrote on 10/12/2015 saying he was “sorry to disappoint” those who supported his run for president, but that he was not running because “the country does not need me”. Seems he was right about one thing. Who’s sorry now??

Here is a worldview of George Friedman, a geopolitics futurist, about China’s strategies.

“At the same time, the Chinese devised a political solution to their strategic problem. If a country like Indonesia or the Philippines aligned with China instead of with the United States, access to the global sea lanes would be assured without power in the regional waters and finding accommodation with regional powers were inconsistent approaches. What’s more, they could only work if the United States was not present. And, of course, it was.
China had one other option for getting around potential U.S. actions: creating an alternative export route through Asia to Europe. This was the One Belt, One Road concept. But it, too, was flawed. First, the cost of building the requisite infrastructure was staggering. Second, it would run through countries that were unstable and, for the Chinese, unimportant customers. Add to that the speed with which One Belt, One Road needed to be enacted, and this was more posturing than policy.
China, therefore, is caught in a set of interlocking problems. Its economic miracle has matured into more normal growth rates. It has a vast population that lacks the ability to consume all that it produces. It has to contend with global stagnation and competition from other producers – and competing with high-tech producers is no small task. It is therefore afraid of internal instability and has imposed a dictatorship designed to maintain a vibrant economy without social costs. To do that, it must increase exports and control access to China’s economy, a move designed to alienate a large and dangerous power, the United States. But it can’t afford to confront the U.S., whose navy it can’t defeat.
The Chinese are caught between the need to placate the United States and to distract it with as many problems as possible. North Korea is a perfect diversion, but siding with Pyongyang is not an option. China can appear to be helping the United States while keeping the U.S. focused on Pyongyang.“

One item expressed there, prosperity creates instability, and stability is incompatible with prosperity, although used in the case of China to show its contradiction, hence China’s weakness, seems to me a general item and applicable elsewhere, such as in the PH or even in the US. But Friedman offers arguments to say that the problem is heightened in the case of China.

China has become the lender of choice for countries whose leaders want to bypass democratic and human rights reforms. Dialing back a nation to Stone Age is easier because “Beijing is often focused on promoting Chinese exports or market rate loans where China wants to get the loan repaid with interest.”

“Critics have long charged that “rogue aid” from China allows some countries to avoid democratic reforms because they can simply turn to China for aid, dodging the scrutiny of traditional Western donors.

Cambodia is a recent example; independent newspapers and western NGOs have been shuttered, as Cambodian leaders’ strengthening ties with China embolden them to turn away from Washington’s demands to hold fair elections.”

JP,
Our AIIB thread is getting long so I continue here.
Bara bara ang China lending to high risk nations.
Maybe their plan is “if they can’t pay, we own them”. So much for development economics and finance.

As I stated above.
China itself has the largest ticking time bomb of corporate debt that sooner or later needs bailing out.
Aside from Csmbodia, there is Sri Lanka, Africa, and their(and Russia’s) biggest headache, Venezuela.

A quote from the report: “According to Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, President Rodrigo Duterte instructed him to give the weapons to the PNP to fill their need for additional arms in order to accomplish their mission on the “war on drugs.”

I know you said at the start of the article that it tilts towards the speculative. But to me, credible speculation consists of a reasonable reading of the unsaid, and not a direct contradiction of what is said, without presenting proof.

In other words, present a “resibo” or receipt, as Pinoy Ako Blog does. Otherwise, you risk sounding no better than the DDS bloggers.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m on the side of honor and decency here. But I tend to be apolitical.

Thanks for the rest of the article nevertheless, and for this site’s contribution to online sanity. It’s an oasis.

Thanks for the inputs. There have been a couple of gifts of weapons, and it was the first, several months ago, that stuck in my mind. There was a lot of commentary around it that conveyed how awkward it would be to use arms from an occupier. I’m not privy to conversations between AFP and Duterte, and know the AFP has not turned puppet. If President Duterte wanted the weapons from the getgo to PNP, you would be right. I’ll stick with my point, that AFP is resisting Chinese arms because it would be a slap in the honor. The honor part comes from my own military experience. It’s a big deal to military people.

I composed the following before Joe’s post above. I am posting it nevertheless.

If I may: accepting the facts as you posted it, no facts may indeed support the claim of that blog statement.

But here is the point: considering the background of China’s actuations in the South China Sea — hence an enemy, Duterte’s friendship to that country notwithstanding — if I am a soldier who loves the PH, I may indeed not want to use those enemy’s weapons in the name of honor. How can we say this sentiment is not in General Lorenzana’s and his other officers’ mind, including the soldiers. Joe, who has some military experience, I believe is putting himself in the mind of the Filipino soldier who loves his country.

Or this conjecture: Gen Lorenzana may have advised Duterte about how this will be viewed by the soldiery, and considering that the latter is still courting AFP, Duterte found the advice sound. PNP on the other hand is relatively low in the matter of honor.

I seem to recall an article (sorry couldn’t provide the link, to search for one will necessitate me to use time I don’t have right now) that stated that during the time when Janet Napoles was not yet engaged in PDAF scamming, she was a broker for AFP’s suppliers, adding that her husband is a friend of Kapunan and Honasan, a connection that surely helped a lot, I think. One of her brokered supplies are the defective helmets (made in China) and involved millions of pesos. Is Janet Lim-Napoles a Filipino-Chinese? She bragged that she cannot be held accountable because they had friends in the Sandigang Bayan, a Filipino-Chinese too who was later stripped of his position due to this scam. Karl, would you know about this?

I have read fictional novels of US soldiers who are mad at their civilian superiors who unnecessarily cost the lives of their comrades at the field by supplying them with firearms that refused to function during an ongoing dangerous battle. That’s fiction, but who was it who said that truth is stranger than fiction?

Many thanks, Karl. A promotion and bonus are hereby humbly recommended by yours truly. Kidding aside, you deserve our deep and heartfelt appreciation, ditto for your able performance as Tanod ba or Sgt-at-Arms. I like your recent posts and comments, very witty but relevant making the dialogue lighter but retaining the seriousness.

Ong voted for the acquittal of Napoles in a malversation case filed in 2010. – could be the one involving the defective helmets for the soldiers.

Janet Luy Lim was born in Malabon, then a municipality of Rizal. She is the fourth of five children of a Chinese Filipino couple: Johnny Co Lim (born Lim King Sing) and Magdalena “Nelly” Lim Luy

Business career and government involvementEdit

Napoles’ business interests date back to the early 1990s. In 1993, she solicited for investments in a shipyard in Cebu, promising 5% interest on all investments. It was later discovered that the money was not invested in the shipyard: according to Col. Ariel Querubín, who was a friend of the Napoles family, the money they had invested in the shipyard was reportedly invested elsewhere, with Napoles pocketing the interest. While the investment was eventually recovered, Querubín claims the investment led to the death of his first wife.[6]

In 2001, Napoles and her husband were implicated in the acquisition by the Armed Forces of the Philippines of ₱3.8 million worth of substandard Kevlar helmets, and were charged with graft and malversation of public funds by the Sandiganbayan (people’s special tribunal). While her husband was dropped from the list of defendants in 2002, Janet Napoles stood trial, and was acquitted on October 28, 2010 for lack of evidence.[7]

In 2013 it was revealed that Janet Napoles’s JLN Corporation had paid significantly less taxes than the average local public school teacher. Records show that from 2009 to 2011, the company paid between ₱9,036 to 25,164 in annual taxes, whereas a public school teacher at that time would have paid around ₱35,952 per year.

With the Court voting 8-5 (with two abstentions), the ruling found Ong “guilty of gross misconduct, dishonesty and impropriety under the new code of judicial conduct for the Philippine judiciary.” Along with his dismissal from office, Ong’s retirement benefits were also forfeited. He is also perpetually barred from re-employment in any instrumentality of the Government.[17]

Ong voted for the acquittal of Napoles in a malversation case filed in 2010.

A very patriotic Filipino-Chinese, sir NH. No doubt about that, a few rotten tomatoes do not make the entire basket rotten. I don’t know if Harvey Keh is one, the same with Andrew Lim but they fine upstanding Filipinos whose patriotism and levelheadedness, like yours, are beyond doubt.

true…on the other hand, Marcos, Arroyo Enrile, Du30 , Estrada, Pimentel, Alvarez, Aguirre, and all the other enablers as well as most of the 16m who still support this regime are full blooded Filipinos but they all suck, sir NH.

Yes, Mary, I agree. If we categorize Filipino citizens according to only two categories — those who genuinely love the country and its people; and those who do not or do not care — we may find that those who belong to the first category are not correlated with the nature of their blood mixture: be they Filipino-Malayan, Filipino-Chinese, Filipino-Spanish, Filipino-American, etc. I believe the major part of their behavior as to genuine love of country and its people lie somewhere else. The better sociologists in our midst may have reasonable explanations or statistics.

Something disturbing struck my thoughts: what if those seized islands are being used for more sinister operations? That they’re in the smack of shipping lanes? Terribly useful for profitable smuggling on a huge scale.

MANILA, Philippines – Malacañang admitted that President Rodrigo Duterte was “being fed the wrong information” after the Chief Executive threatened to expel European diplomats based on the wrong premise.

Because Duterte’s statement was based on wrong information, Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella then clarified on Friday, October 13, that “there’s no directive” for ambassadors of the European Union (EU) to leave the Philippines within 24 hours.

China (and Russia) has all the best hackers [with the exception of America, of course, from where the venerable profession of hacking originated 🙂 🙂 ] and so, it can easily manufacture consent in the social sphere.

The Philippines’s social sphere today, where most of public discourse take place, occurs in the internet. Even the D and E crowd know of and are on online social media.

We know we must assert ourselves against Chinese intrusion … predominantly their intrusion into the hearts and minds of the Filipino people. This is the new field of war — not the trenches, not actual physical fields of battle, not even the boardrooms — those days are past.

This is a war of ideas and ideals. I am a Filipino, and I will not be party to mainland Chinese ideals of “progress” where “Impunity is prominent over equality and fairness. Obedience is prominent over self-determination. Bribes are acceptable.”

like, like, like… and I agree, totally. We need to match the propaganda machine of this regime and for that we need experts on techonology and a unified approach on how to reach majority of our citizens. We need to protect the likes of PAB,TSH, VERA files, and the others. I never get tired of sharing their published analysis and I need to get back to shareing those in FB groups with greater following than mine. It’s time for patriotic groups with greater resources to realize that the fight to win the hearts and minds of our countrymen is in social media. Rallies could get infiltrated and start civil disturbance which is just what Du30 is waiting to declare a revolutionary government or martial law nationwide. When more people are on our side, we (millions) can go out on the streets and hope the AFP is on our side

His talks of destabilization against his admin is a diversionary tactic meant to make people forget, in the meantime, the issues pressing him like the shabu smuggling, the bank account waivers and the tattoo on the back of his son.

He added the revolutionary government tack to make it appear that he is still in full control of the reins of government. But it is doubtful that he could do it because he knows that the military is not 100% behind him.

Anything can happen in the days to come but not his arrogant posturing re that form of government. He is unstoppable in showing his demented state of mind.

He can’t do everything he wants because of the Constitution so he is trying to find a reason so he can have the power needed to push for federalism and the revision of the 1986 Constitution.

“Pag ang destabilization ninyo patagilid na and medyo magulo na (If your destabilization is worsening and it is becoming chaotic), I will not hesitate to declare a revolutionary government until the end of my term, and I will arrest all of you and we can go to a full scale war against the Reds,” he said in an interview with Erwin Tulfo aired over PTV Friday night.”

People are getting tired of his threats and fear-mongering. Hardly anybody listens to him anymore. He is looked at as a senile old man whose light up there flickers but is no longer warm nor bright. More people are talking like him (cussing, ad hominem, thuggish) but it is directed towards him. It is sad but it is the only way some people know how to fight back.

“Ang utos ko, lahat na lang ng mga civilian, bigyan nila ng armas. Kayo na ang makipag-away sa mga durugista because I need the soldiers in another front.” (My command is give all civilians weapons. All of you can then do after the druggies because I need the soldiers in another front.)

“Each citizen is now given the right to bear arms just like in America and shoot the drug people. Would that it be all right with you?”

The soldiers were never involved from the start, it has always been the PNP is this state sponsored EJKs.

Bravo for that particular audience who disagreed with this idiotic idea of the Chief Executive. It seems they have more spine than the cabinet and ligislative members.

With all the killings happening in the US of A because of their right to bear arms, one would expect that he will be for confiscating all loose firearms around instead of encouraging citizens to get involved in this deadly drug war.

…but what can we expect from such a blood thirsty leader who feels he can do anything like what his family is doing in Davao City for 1986 until now?

As of February 2017, it seems that a MOA had been signed by the AFP to assist PDEA in the war on drugs. It appears that their main thrust before was in Mindanao but it will be national now (my reading on the implication of the article below).

“In line with the February 2017 MOA, the AFP has been a significant force provider to the anti-illegal drug operations, especially in conflict-affected areas, particularly where conditions for insurgency, secessionism and terrorism persist,” Año said yesterday.

Now that the Philippine National Police (PNP) is taking a backseat on the campaign, he said the AFP is reaffirming the military’s commitment to the country’s war on illegal drugs.”

It will be interesting to wait and see if the new partnership between PDEA and AFP will result in less casualties.

*******
From what I could see, that particular audience was composed of the henchmen and hangers-on of the President. But even the most rabid of blind fanatics cannot stomach the wonky illegal ideas of their one-eyed leader. They have their own limits.
*****

Now,
I don’t want China as our enemy, and I consider Fil Chinese as good for our economy, but this is like rape, and rape is all about power.
Like that thing going on in Hollywood, we must say enough is enough.

Now we have a president telling the Australians to be friendly with the Chinese because China can stop North Korea from pushing the button.

I’ve never understood why China uses thuggery to get what she wants, like access to PH resources, when she could just buy access cheaply. So much energy wasted in doing it the ‘superior’ way. I can only conclude that her national psyche has been badly damaged by historical bad behaviors by others, and she has had enough. Having been abused, she only knows abuse, and will exercise it until a strong victim fights back, and wins. So much nonsense.

A strong victim like India maybe? The dudes from South Asia should get their acts together if they want to defeat the Chinese. First of all, quit around messing around with Pakistan would be a good starting point, and second, get their economy in order and third, Bollywood should start exporting itself to the world.

I am not so sure about that. Russia is deeply indebted to China from what I read lately. Maybe as trade partners, but India, as far as I know do not extend loans or grants to Russia.
In actuality, India is the largest recipient of World Bank loans for the past 70 years according to World Bank’s lending report:

Even in the link I posted, it said that India’s silk road will compliment China’s silk road.

“Much has been written about how the NSTC will challenge China’s BRI, but this position really only has relevance in the enclosed walls of think tanks and in the comment sections of webpages. On the ground, the two initiatives overlap seamlessly and feed into each other. For all intents and purposes, it is extremely difficult to separate one from the other.”

“Many of the countries of Europe realized that participating in the AIIB was not only an effective move for the development of much-needed infrastructure, but also the only way that they could really influence its direction. It was initially feared that the AIIB would act as a competitor to the more established multilateral development banks, utilizing lax environmental and social protocols to undercut them as a way to jump to the forefront of the Asian infrastructure development theater. This potentiality was effectively snuffed out by a critical mass of European countries jumping in and ensuring the establishment of environmental, social, and energy standards that were virtually copied and pasted from the World Bank and ADB.

Although China still wields the largest weighted voting power in the AIIB, this doesn’t mean that the bank is inherently Chinese controlled — and there were incidents of other members usurping China’s say on the creation of the bank’s Articles of Agreement. It has even been posited that China could soon lose its veto power with the continued addition of new members.”

The thing of concern is lending to nations that may not be able to pay back their loans. It is a new lender so it will have to re-calibrate as it experiences different scenarios just like the World Bank.

Calling chemrock : Could you please write an article about the AIIB? Thank you.

No surprise about GMA beating the December deadline to join PDP-Laban party. I think there is truth in the speculation that she is hitching her wagon to the ruling party because she wants another government position when her HOR stint ends.

I was not aware that PDP-Laban has very lofty core principles. Aside from federalism, I am taking the rest with a pinch of salt.

“But she must be the one to change by embracing the PDP-Laban’s core principles of belief in God, human dignity, love of country, equal opportunities for all, consultative and participatory democracy, and federalism,” he said in a separate message.”

China will not stop with its expansionist ideas as long as there is a stooge who is willing to sell his country at whatever price dangled before his covetous eyes.

Duterte is entertaining his followers with the idea of a revolutionary government because he had that dream of becoming a dictator like his idol Marcos but with a twist – the Chinese will be behind him.

China is replicating the tactics used by the British and the French during the Opium war. The 29 billion peso smuggling of shabu was an auspicious start of something big that would be hard to ignore – the colonization of the whole country through means fair and foul.

Making this country a narco state is not an easy task but the plans were already in place when Duterte had been visiting China with Bong Go long before the last election campaign period. The harassment of our coast guard and fishermen were convenient tricks to divert the attention away from the shabu shipments which proved to be highly successful.

With both houses of Congress under his control, every step of the way will be a stroll in the park.

PHILIPPINE LEADER. President Rodrigo Duterte draws flak for threatening to create a revolutionary government

MANILA, Philippines – Opposition group Tindig Pilipinas slammed President Rodrigo Duterte as a “paranoid and insecure little man” after he warned he will declare a revolutionary government should a destabilization plot seek to replace him with a new leader.

“President Duterte is losing his grip. Only a paranoid and insecure little man afraid of losing power will rationalize the need to impose a revolutionary government upon the people,” anti-Duterte coalition Tindig Pilipinas said in a statement Saturday, October 14.

“The paranoia is evident. It is manifested in the slide in the surveys, from the increasing numbers of the various forms of protests, from the massive pushback on social media and from the President’s increasingly irrational, indefensible and incoherent stances,” the group added.

Tindig Pilipinas issued this statement after Duterte on Friday, October 13, threatened to create a revolutionary governemnt. He told critics that he will do this if he thinks they’re “about to take over the nation,” and if they “have destabilized government” to the point that they will name a new leader.

But Tindig Pilipinas said the “threat to annihilate” democracy is Duterte’s “ultimate power game” in order to suppress “growing discontent” among the people.

“Like any abuser sensing that his victims are seeing him as the abuser that he is, he senses doom. He knows he is an empty can once he loses control,” the statement said, as it listed Duterte’s vulnerabilities, including the P6.4-billion Customs smuggling, his family’s wealth, and his refusal to sign the bank secrecy waiver.

Tindig Pilipinas said there is nothing reformist or revolutionary about the government Duterte threatened to create because “he is playing for survival.”

“Let no one see this as anything else but weakness,” the coalition said. They also urged democratic forces to “resist this move to subvert our nation for the interests of one man, his family, and his cohorts.”

This is not the first time the President toyed with the idea of a revolutionary government, but back in August, he said he is “not into it.” – Rappler.com

It has grudges a mile long — as such: 1. China feels that it was raped by Japan in WWII, 2. Raped and forced into addiction by the British in the Opium wars and the Treaty of Nanking, 3. Raped and mutilated by the French, British, Russians and the US in the Treaty of Tientsin, 4. Humiliated in the Boxer Rebellion, etc etc.

The point is, there is only so much pain and humiliation an entity can take without turning into the Dark Side (look at Anakin Skywalker, for example).

The Chinese psyche at the moment is a classic case of Anakin Skywalker syndrome; it’s like The-Revenge-of-the-Fallen to use Transformers terminology.

Because let us remember that once upon a time (like 1000-1500 years ago maybe) China WAS the best. China was the Center of the World. When the US of A was teeming with savages (sorry for the un-PC term, but basically that’s how ignoramus outsiders see Native Americans) and Britain was in the Dark Ages and Germany was a Black Forest and nothing else, China was the light of the world (there was also light in India and the Middle East during those times, of course, but they are not the topic of discussion here).

So this is personal for China. It needs to prove itself, assert it’s trampled masculinity (or some such BS), and show the world it will never be victim again.

China will fail. No matter how cunning—brutish authoritarians will always lack the finesse of supposedly weak democrats. Not having to please people, being virtually unaccountable by many measures—all the intelligence in the brain can’t shield you from the rot and vulnerability that causes.

Look at China’s behavior when it goes against things it doesn’t like.

Of course—the West somehow buys into the “Oriental Mystique” and thinks the planning men at Beijing are superhuman tacticians who plan for centuries…

By “the West”, I don’t mean that against the article above. The article is right in saying that China has been seriously expanding its influence (for better or for worse) here. And we should pay attention—our trade links are becoming too close/dependent for comfort, in some aspects.

Just that, the general tone of many China articles that I discovered—in my layman and un-expert opinion—seem to think of the Chinese elite as all reincarnations of the strategists of the Three Kingdoms. That China, for some reason, thinks longer and farther than other countries.

“China’s time horizon spans decades while Western time horizons span years. China’s time horizon spans centuries when Western time horizons span decades. After the Tiananmen square protest in 1989, Deng Xiaoping’s conclusion was not that the CPC failed to offer more participative or democratic means for the masses, but that the problem was simply the failure of the CPC’s propaganda efforts. It was the time when new education policies were employed to foster nationalistic feelings and to popularize the notion of a “century of humiliation” brought by the imperialist powers of the West. It is worth mentioning that, during this time, Chinese leaders also saw the need to strengthen a so-called “maritime consciousness” of a population that traditionally was rather land-oriented. Increasingly, the CPC can “reap the fruits” of its long-planned nationalism program in order to gain domestic legitimacy.“

As insomniaic snoozer in noodle land
I am penchant who like to read news
of monstrosity having world relevance;
about MONSTERS and their FACILITATORS
against the weak, exposed and vulnerable
members of the human race.

Awake and free I write
what comes to heart and mind.
Never mind even if it’s a faulty metaphor,
little women can be example of victims
of evil anywhere,
like the beauties of El Aey’s Hollywood

Names of ogre doesn’t really matter
whether Bill and another Bill,
Or Benjamin or Harve, or Errol or Romy.
And darn Of Course,
their unnamed FACILITATORS.

It’s all over the news the strategic schemes,
the details of machinations and tactics
inventive ploys to ensnare to bed
those mostly unwilling weaker sex.

The metaphor jumps from there
the Mecca of million dollar dreams
to miles away of poor countries yonder
whack and wrecked in endless ways
by monsters and their FACILITATORS.

Dictators idolizes with violence
their FATHERLAND
while Jose Rizal adores with respect
and loved deeply his MOTHERLAND.
It’s neither here nor there to think
of one’s country as a woman except
of her beauty and frailty;
if corruption is evil therefore a monstrosity
unstoppable on and on puzzling one and all?
One can conjecture it is because of
a Monster and a horde of FACILITATORS
who must exist no more for the good of all.

—————————

As the names of complainants multiply (more than two dozens now) to the maltreatment of beautiful women in Hollywood by a lone perpetrator, it should also bring to light the FACILITATORS who aided and abetted the monstrosity. If the monstrosity is like corruption and whatever evil in governance in the Philippines, and the Monster and the Facilitators will not be stopped, it becomes a continuing way of life. Think of the BOC, the BIR, the DOT, etc. or the Courts, the Congress. If FIXERS are unaccpetables, try to abhor the FACILITATORS.

Hear HEAR! in this TSOH Blog abounds critical and unafraid the doings of Monsters and the Names of their FACILITATORS.

come to think of it, have I not posted it here before that ONLY and ONLY the President (his beneficiaries) and his FACILITATORS can, repeat CAN STOP corruption in the Bureau of Customs and all elsewhere in the Philippine government bureaucracy? Ditto that If USA comes to blows with China, Philippines could be one of the firsts to hit the canvas?

Both links tell us that his popularity is sliding albeit slowly. 1st quarter = 86; 2nd quarter = 83; and the 3rd and most recent quarter =80.

“Say the error margin was 2.99 points – it would mean the lowest range of his 86% gross satisfaction rating in September 2016 would be 83.01%, while the highest range of his 80% rating in September 2017 would be 82.99%. There is no overlap between the two ratings and the decline becomes clearer.

The decline is equivalent to a range of less than a million people to a high of 12 million people withdrawing support for Duterte.” ~Carmela Fonbuena, Rappler

At the higher rate of support withdrawal, only 4 million are left from his 16 million voters! I shoot for the higher rate because I am a glass half-full person. I figured, 13,000+ War on Drugs casualties + Milgram’s “Six degrees of separation” theory + social media/news media (Internet) could explain the higher number. Manong Herrera, help me out here, please! 🙂

Public schools’ standard during the time of Orly Mercado and some of our earlier great leaders have deteriorated during our time, at least in our province. Unc. (karl, nakiki-uncle na rin ako ha) Sonny, sir Edgar, sir NH Will, JP and the rest here are superb in either English or Pilipino.

1. If I have to credit equally both Surveys made by SWS and Pulse Asia — “Satisfaction” (word used by SWS) and “Performance-Trust” (words used by Pulse Asia) — by the public on President Duterte, I am left with a dissatisfied feeling and wanted to stop right here.

2. But undaunted, I pushed beyond my typical academic interest.

3. First, as noted by some, the headline numbers in the report are apples and oranges. One, SWS, talks of Net rating (approval minus disapproval) and the other, PA, talks of gross approval — that is not deducting the disapproval numbers. Hence 48 number of SWS; and 80 number of PA for Q3 2017.

4. Beyond this note of net versus gross numbers, it has been noted and I confirm this by looking at previous numbers, that PA numbers tend to be favorable to Duterte than do the SWS numbers.

5. The more useful item is to compare Q3 2016 results with Q3 2017 results:

SWS Q3 2016 for Approved, Undecided, Disapproved: 76, 13, 11

SWS Q3 2017 for Approved, Undecided, Disapproved: 67, 14, 19

PA Q3 2016 for Approved, Undecided, Disapproved: 86, 11, 3

PA Q3 2016 for Approved, Undecided, Disapproved: 80, 13, 7.

Note in the above, that 76, 67, 86, 80 are gross numbers, the first two SWS’ and the last two PA’s.

11. LAST ITEM. JP, I will not comment on the number of supporters of Duterte’s 16 million voters still remain with him. To do so will likely cause me to lose my academic credential; or worse, our host, Joe, banning me hereabouts. 🙂

But if one only talks of a numbers game, one may multiply 16 million with the averages above and get:

Based on gross average ratio >> 14.5
Based on net average ratio >> 12.9

Death, fair or foul is the terminator
of all human endeavor;
Murder is the ultimate tipping point
Which trigger the irreversible dive
to oblivion by any perpetrator.

Even in politics Murders are grim reapers
That the public know, SIGNALS
Only a matter of time but justice
Will certainly prevail to finish
What politics has begun.

Opinion surveys vacillates
Up or down for profit
It’s Physics. it’s pretty GRAVITY.
What’s pulled down never
Will ever be pulled up,
Pulled down by murders
No politician ever recovers
Says the judgmental local history.

So, Math and its exact numbers
Are mere intellectualized eche bucheche
Before Father time pulls the curtains down.
Tapos na po, Eh.

Yes the circus is far from over
until the tiger and its rider
make the crowd turned their
heads and close their eyes
in horror to a tragic spectacle.

Dictators idolizes with violence
their FATHERLAND
while Jose Rizal adores with respect
and loved deeply his MOTHERLAND.
It’s neither here nor there to think
of one’s country as a woman except
of her beauty and frailty;

Had you ever marched with an old Springfield rifle on your shoulder
Had you ever marched ahead of your college along Taft Avenue
hands in rebel salute, cheered by crowds on the sidewalk
on the way to Mendiola? No tears, no fear of death cross your mind?

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